Xiaomi Mi 8 – What to do if you receive it with unlocked bootloader and Global MIUI

Before some days an administrator at en.miui wrote an official announcement of the company that will create a lot of problem in the future in many buyers of Xiaomi. The announcement can be found here.

According to what is written, if you live outside of China and you have a mobile that is not Global officially by Xiaomi, will not be able to install to it Global Rom and vise versa. If your mobile is Chinese version you will be able to install only Chinese ROM. For many of you might not be a problem as you might install Chinese version that has English. But there are many that install custom ROM of their language. They might have problem…. So what we do in a such case in order to avoid any future problem!? Let’s have a look…

I received before a few days my Mi 8 6/256GB China version. I know that because the version 6/256GB is not to be sold officially outside of China. How can you understand that your mobile is China version and not Global? There are some signs….First, for the Mi 8, the Global version is written on the box outside with red letters. Secondly, the charger is EU, not Chinese like mine. Third and 100% officially, you check it your self at this link from Xiaomi – Product Authenticator.

You must also know that till now are recorded many cases of bricked Mi 8 at the official MIUI forum. If you have a bricked Mi 8 like the ones recorded in the forum, you can restore your mobile only if you put it in EDL and you have an Authorized MIUI account by Xiaomi, which is hard to find. According to the announcement and the cases reports, the only solution to avoid such possibility is to have your bootloader unlocked by you.

The procedure I’m gonna tell you, you will better do ONLY if you have Chinese version with unlocked bootloader not by you, like I had. I ordered a Mi 8 and because is Chinese version, in order to have Greek, they had to unlock the bootloader with their account and install a Global ROM. So in my case and with this announcement, there is a big possibility to have problems in the future if something doesn’t install right! My Mi 8 came with MIUI 9.5 Global Stable as shown in the picture.

In my case I even had to download by OTA an update…

In order to lock the bootloader again and unlock it with your account as I did, you will need these two things:

1. Latest Mi Flash Tool
2. China Developers Fastboot ROM

The latest version of Mi Flash Tool you can download it from this link: Mi Flash

At the same site you will find and the Chinese Fastboot Developers ROM that you need.

ATTENSION !!! You must NOT lock your bootloader with stable version or it will brick your mobile! ONLY Chinese Developers Fastboot ROM. You choose your model and then Dev CH, as shown at the photo. The extension of the file that you will download, will not be zip as of recovery, but tgz. You can download it from here : Chinese Fastboot Developers ROM

After downloading the file, you must decompress it in a folder at your PC. I made a folder named Aa and putted in there. Run the Mi Flash Tool as admin at your PC. Put your Mi 8 at Fastboot mode, by pressing Volume down and power together. Don’t forget to have charged it well before. Connect it to your PC. Press Select at Mi Flash Tool and find the folder where you have the uncompressed Fastboot ROM. Choose it and after that press refresh at the Mi Flash Tool. You must now see your mobile. If you don’t see it, then you have a drivers issue and you must solve it, Check the option at the lower part of the program “Clean All and lock” and press Flash. The whole procedure will take some minutes. If you check my video, you will see that despite the fact that my mobile rebooted, it was still counting. Nevertheless, if you see your mobile to reboot, disconnect it form the PC .

When the whole booting procedure finish, you will see that you will have the Chinese Developers version installed in your Mi 8.

Because I had it for some hours installed in my Mi 8, before I try to complete the whole procedure, I found out some very interesting things in the Chinese Dev version. First of all, you can root your mobile by yourself. There is an option in the options menu that does thing thing. At the custom version I had till now, had to use SuperSu or Magisk. Interesting….

Also, the AI of the camera I think is working better. Trying it out at the night, without any lights, I found out a menu in Chinese, where activated the AI measuring and you could see in the following picture before, to measure about 20-30 points to take the ideal photo. In the Xiaomi.eu version that I have now, I haven’t found this menu yet. The picture you see is of lower quality of the original, but still is one of the best I have ever taken night with a Xiaomi mobile!

The photo is with HDR and AI activated.

Now, time to finish the whole procedure. In order to unlock the bootloader, you must follow the steps that are told in the Official Xiaomi site here: Unlock Bootloader

Before you start the whole procedure, I will tell you a little secret, what to do to avoid the problem I run to. IF you check you Mi account, you might see your Mi 8. But this doesn’t mean that your account is associated with it. If you don’t have associated your account with your Mi 8, if you try to run the Unlocking procedure, you will see this error message.

So, how you can solve this problem!? It’s very easy! Insert your SIM in your Mi 8 and go to Options -> About Mobile and press several time on the MIUI version. After 5-6 taps you will see a message that you are now a Developer. Go back -> More Settings ->  Developers and search for this option that is shown in the picture and says Unlocked. In your case must say Locked.

Enter the option and run the wizard. Finishing, you will have your Mi 8 associated with your Mi account and now you can try to unlock your mobile.

Now go back to the Unlocking, try it again and this time there are two scenarios to see. One, you have waiting time up to 720 hours or like mine that I unlocked it immediately!

With unlocked bootloader, you can now install TWRP and any custom ROM you like. I like to install from Xiaomi.eu, as I have OTA from them.

You can check the whole procedure and in my video…

I hope this guide will help you to avoid future trouble with your mobile. Don’t forget to like the video and subscribe.

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